As virtually all of Washington was declaring WikiLeaks’s disclosures of secret diplomatic cables an act of treason, Representative Ron Paul was applauding the organization for exposing the United States’ “delusional foreign policy.” For this, the conservative blog RedState dubbed him “Al Qaeda’s favorite member of Congress.”

After years of blocking him from a leadership position, Mr. Paul’s fellow Republicans have named him chairman of the House subcommittee on domestic monetary policy, which oversees the Federal Reserve as well as the currency and the valuation of the dollar.

Republicans had blocked Mr. Paul from leading the monetary policy panel once before, and banking executives reportedly urged them to do so again. But Republicans on Capitol Hill increasingly recognize that Mr. Paul has a following — among his supporters from 2008 and within the Tea Party, which helped the Republicans recapture the House majority by picking up Mr. Paul’s longstanding and highly vocal opposition to the federal debt.

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Bill4DogCatcher sez: Am a big fan of Ron Paul, although am not necessarily a supporter. The world however would be a better place with 20-25 more Ron Pauls. He is a truthteller even if we may disagree about the truth.

Ron Paul is an Austrian Economics economist. That is equivalent to being Adam Smith on steroids. Philosophically I agree with the core arguments of this school of thought but consider it a naive approach in our less than perfect world. That said, Ron Paul and other such libertarians — and the Austrian School of Economics ultimately is about personal freedom — care more about protecting your rights and freedoms than most people care about protecting the freedoms of others.

Bless you Ron Paul – even when I disagree with you I know that I am disagreeing with an honest man.